I agree with the many other Christians who think that this is a horrible argument. It's quite a stretch to go from Jesus' temple action to killing people. Of course if Jesus, say, stabbed somebody to death in the temple then we might have something to talk about. But that's not what happened. To be sure, the word "violence" could be used to describe Jesus' actions, but that's a far cry from giving us a warrant to kill.
And yet, there is something much less talked about and debated regarding Jesus' temple action.
One of those activist communities must be left to ask, after the recent riots in Baltimore, is if it's ever okay to break a window during a protest. And if so, when?
A strict non-violent approach to activism would argue that it's never okay to break a window, for both practical and ethical reasons. But more militant strands of activism would say that while we should never hurt human beings, there are times when it's justifiable to destroy property. That is, when we talk about the use of violence a distinction can be made between property and people.
That, I think, is the important distinction to be made around violence in places like Baltimore.
I bring this up to make two observations.
The first observation is that while I don't think the violence of Jesus' temple action can be used as a warrant for violence against people the situation is murkier when it comes to violence toward property. The temple action was a symbolic, public and visible act of protest against economic and political corruption that involved some violence toward property. Jesus left the moneychangers and dove sellers with a clean-up bill.
But let me be really clear here: I think it's hard to draw ethical implications from Jesus' act, especially for places like Baltimore.
For example, it's hard to tell if Jesus was trying to change the system or trying to provoke the system into a violent response, picking a lethal fight to shame the Powers That Be. Either way, Jesus' temple action wasn't politically effective, unless you consider execution by the state a mark of success. Basically, it's hard to get a sense of what Jesus was trying to accomplish in the temple action.
In addition, if Jesus did destroy property during the temple action, he took full public responsibility for it. Jesus wasn't an anonymous anarchist wearing a Guy Fawkes mask. What we see in Jesus' action -- if we believe that he destroyed property -- is more akin to acts of civil disobedience where property is destroyed and those engaging in the action do not flee but stay to be publicly identified and arrested. That, it seems to me, is what happened in the 60s with the Catonsville Nine.
So again, it's hard to know exactly what, if any, lessons we should take away from Jesus' temple action. Which brings me to the second point I'd like to make, a point that is more about the hermeneutics of the temple action than about the ethics.
Specifically, many of the Christians who use the violence of the temple action to justify killing or violence toward people are very often the same people who decry violence toward property during protests.
Think about it.
How many of those Christians do you know who use Jesus' actions in the temple to justify war, but turn around and decry riots in the streets of Baltimore?
That's very strange.
Because it's selective hermeneutics.
If Jesus did, in fact, destroy property -- as a very cursory reading of those stories in the gospels would lead me to believe -- he certainly wasn't willing to destroy people. Jesus didn't kill in the temple.
But he was willing -- again, on a very cursory reading -- to destroy property. Particularly when that property was part of a systemic exploitative economic and political system. I'm not saying this is a case that can -- or even should be made -- but I think it's important to pay attention to what the text actually says, and allow your theology to grow therefrom.
Jesus' temple action was a symbolic and dramatic enactment taking place within the overarching narrative of Israel's relationship with YHWH. I'd argue that Jesus was telling a story more than he was engaging in a form of political activism.
People can (and do!) debate me about that. Regardless, my purposes today in drawing attention to Jesus' temple action is how it illuminates background assumptions that regulate our hermeneutical choices, why some readings of a text are deemed legitimate or illegitimate.
Specifically, in conservative, evangelical circles why is the temple action often used to justify violence toward people -- even killing people -- but never used to justify violence toward property in protests against exploitation and oppression? (Could it be that we're really more beholden to John Locke than to Jesus?)
I think a key here is where the violence is being directed, the othering nature of violence.
Specifically, when the temple action is used in debates about justified violence toward people -- even killing people -- the person being aggressed against or killed in these debated scenarios is an Other -- the enemy, for example, in a just war. The violence is being directed at Them rather than at Us.
By contrast, violence against property is always turned in on ourselves. It's a violence against Us. (How many times did you hear people say, in criticism of the riots, that the violence was only hurting themselves, their community?)
What that means, of course, is that the violence is of two different kinds.
In killing the enemy, the goal is to preserve our country, violence to protect Us, violence to protect our empire.
In destroying property, the goal is to call us and our empire to repentance, to recognize the ways in which we've gone seriously wrong, and the need to remedy those wrongs.
So that brings me back to Jesus' action in the temple. Which of those two situations best fits what Jesus was doing the rest of the time, when he's not cleansing the temple? Because, odds are, that's what cleansing the temple would have meant.
Was Jesus killing enemies of a foreign nation in a war to protect his country or protecting his family from a violent intruder? Or was Jesus using violence toward property in a protest to call his nation to collective repentance for its systemic oppression?
Hear me say this again: I'm not defending the riots. Destruction of property is a really poor way to get that change accomplished. I think Jesus' actions in the temple demonstrate as much. Jesus' actions in the temple were a singularity, a theatrical enactment taking place at a critical time and place in Israel's overarching story. My point is to draw attention to how more plausible readings of Scripture are deemed illegitimate while less plausible readings are deemed legitimate.
In the case of Jesus' temple action, notice how a pro-Empire reading is, by default, deemed moral, rational and legitimate whereas an anti-Empire reading is deemed immoral, irrational and illegitimate. When the violence is directed toward Others, the reading is legitimate; when the violence is directed at Us, even violence of a much milder sort, it's illegitimate.
What that means, of course, is that the Empire is controlling how we read these texts, not our discipleship to Jesus. Our readings of the biblical text are determined more by self-interest -- whether that be personal or national -- than by self-denial. Jesus becomes aligned with Us vs. Them.
Especially if we'd like to kill Them.
Pause for a second.
And ask yourself: Is that what Jesus was doing in the temple?